


First Lady

by blueberry



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Relationship Study, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 11:36:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3608628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberry/pseuds/blueberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love starts to look different in the apocalypse. Lori goes about an ordinary day on the Greene farm and finds that she thinks a lot of things, little and big, that she can't say, even to Rick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Lady

_I have a bad habit of thinking of the future._ \-- that one while watching Carl in the morning before he jammed his hat on, thinking he'd need a haircut soon ... wondering if they'd ever run out of scissors as years went by how much taller her boy would have a chance to grow.

Then: _Bad habit of thinking of the present, too. Nothing's really out to wait around to give us time to lose equipment or get tall._

 _'Absence makes the heart grow fonder' vs. 'out of sight, out of mind'. So which one wins, folk wisdom?_ \-- while not looking at Shane as she doled out breakfast. And not looking at Andrea and whatever her issues were driving her forth to do that minute, and not looking at Daryl as he made his own decisions at the edge of camp about whether he was having a looking-people-in-the-eye day or a fuck-all-y'all-at-first-opportunity day. Definitely, definitely not looking at Shane, for now.

_For however many years we have, let's hope we can stand the sight of each other for long enough periods of time not to blow the house up around us._

_Oh God. He's going to be desperate enough to make us write our own poetry soon, isn't he? We're going to be turned into the new literary canon out of pure desperation._ \-- watching Dale as he lowered and raised his eyebrows at a book that probably hadn't done enough to deserve it.

Lori kept finding herself thinking things she couldn't say. She didn't have anyone to say them to. Except - Carol, who you could talk to about almost anything without shocking her, though it was fun how easily she could be shocking with her jokes and sharp observations. Shane, who you really could talk to about anything, disgusting or wrong as you liked, as long as you were prepared to back yourself up if it led to the kind of random arguments he liked to have every now and then. Glenn, who was a big chatty sweetheart as long as you stayed off anything embarrassing. Rick. Obviously. That was the idea, she knew, and she'd definitely given him enough flack about it over the past year and a bit, back when life had still been real.

It wouldn't do any good to speak to them. With Shane, it hurt on too many levels; it was _dangerous_ and might be for a long time to come. With the others...

 _I've got a strategy,_ Lori thought as she hung washing, stilling with surprise that faded almost as soon as she felt it. Of course she did. She had to. After all, she was the 'First Lady', as Carol had put it the other day when they'd hung the washing. Lori went back to her work.

Hearing about the First Lady thing had definitely been a surprise, and she still wondered if anyone else saw it that way. But if she looked around at the group it made sense to think that she should be careful about keeping her own biting qualities under control, not pushing anyone's strained state of mind just so she could vent; to look at each of the people she'd lived with in the quarry, spilled over the lawn and diving in and out of the RV for supplies, and think that she had to care for them. Not just clean and cook and chat because that was what there was to do, but to consider what they might need and try to work with that understanding. She'd only just started thinking and feeling that way, and now that she realised it, she wanted to consciously try and accomplish it.

 _Thanks a lot, Rick. Guess you were bound to rub off eventually._ \-- which made her smile more genuine as she told him goodbye before he set off into the forest to look for poor Sophia. Maybe she'd actually tell him she was appreciative about that one. Lori hadn't married the man because he was so easy to describe with the word _good_ , but it wasn't exactly something you'd reject out of hand. Her desire to help probably hadn't sprung up as intensely as Rick had it, anyway.

Being partnered with Rick, a force because she stood beside him, was new. Presenting a united front at the PTA or big family Christmases had very little on the current situation. Standing between him and the world was completely familiar, even when it had needed a lot less saving - she still had to talk him down when he wanted to run full tilt into his idea of the bigger picture and missed what was just as necessary in front of him. To have to match the kind of things he did, for various reasons, but in large part because he was hers... 'Old school', as Carl would say, if she wasn't embarrassingly behind with her slang. But the fact that it was this way didn't seem wrong, it felt like it fit.

Digging in her heels and shoving the world back when it wanted to get at him - when Shane, or Carol, or one of the others questioned his decisions with no alternatives to give or real help to offer - that was new too. Nobody much took Rick on except over points of protocol, and often on subjects she wasn't too hot on herself, like Bible verses or police procedure or last meeting's minutes, so she'd let it go and wait to see how she could lend support. Now? Challenges aimed at him made her want to draw lines. It was one of those things people would have to avoid doing so that nobody eventually ended up blowing up the Greenes' beautiful house.

When it was not too long after sunset, the chickens had all been rounded up, and everyone was back at camp, Lori went to bed. She was grateful in a sense for that fact that the warmth of the sleeping bag had become all the comfort she needed to get sleepy, and never mind softness, and when Rick came soon afterwards, that at least was the kind of comment she could make aloud so that he'd give a huff of laughter and agreement. He lay down, big-spooning as usual, and softly gave an account of his day, asking about hers and what had happened on the farm, strong and relaxed against her.

She took note with satisfaction that he asked after people by name, ensuring in a half-conscious murmur that everybody here had been doing okay. She felt the hitch in his sigh when he spoke of the search for Sophia, and she took stock of what she could see and feel of him and decided that he would be entirely too tense if he weren't so tired. Not much to do about it now but sleep, but she'd try to come up with something. The last thing anyone needed was more tension in the air.

_This isn't what marriage means. This isn't what love means. This is what survival means._

But it was a fine line, Lori thought. She wore her ring and he wore his, and whatever troubles they used to have and the new ones that had developed, they could remember how it had felt to make the promises embodied in those rings. And it meant a lot, the way Rick cried out for her and her child with everything in him, when he he'd found them again and whenever they were endangered. Couldn't it also mean a lot, that if they wanted to be the kind of people that others depended on, that they could help each other accomplish that?

She put her hand to her belly - couldn't be a coward about it all the time - and thought about the future.

She would be his partner, digging her heels in for that right. It wasn't fair to hurt someone like Rick, who made himself a target for scrutiny even with his huge number of soft spots; somebody who'd done it as well as her knew that by now. She hated thinking of him without someone on his side, and she wanted it to be her. That had to mean something, and she hoped, when all the secrets came out, that it would mean a lot.


End file.
